


I love you, I promise.

by verati



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Denial and Acceptance, Doesn't mean Jon doesn't hold some responsibility for King's Landing, Emotional Manipulation, Hurt/Comfort, I just want Sansa and Jon to be happy, Jon Snow will show signs of emotional abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sansa and Arya support each other, So some of his actions might seem OOC, War Trauma, and will need to come to terms with his complicity, because it was in an abusive and toxic relationship, not Jon/Dany friendly, they are ready to kick ass
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-21
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2021-02-16 11:03:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21506839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verati/pseuds/verati
Summary: "We are the last Targaryens." She takes his face into her hands. "Stand by my side. And we will purge the world of all the evil, corruption, and pain that infests it. We will break the wheel. Together."The air is thick with ash. Thick with death. Thick with hurt.She brings her lips to his in a binding kiss.In another world Jon Snow ended the kiss with steel and blood.In this world he ends the kiss with an oath. It has become routine. Repetition makes it easier to believe. Easier to hide the fear."You are my queen now and always."His lips burn in protest because they remember a different oath. A promise he made to a woman kissed by fire..."I'll protect you, I promise."Tyrion is interrupted before he can convince Jon to kill Daenerys. What happens then? Sansa is summoned to King's Landing under threat of dragon fire for treason against the new queen of the seven kingdoms. Will Jon remember who he is and who he loves before it’s too late?
Relationships: Arya Stark/Gendry Waters, Jon Snow/Sansa Stark, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 74
Kudos: 93





	I love you, I promise.

**Author's Note:**

> Arya POV/Tyrion POV
> 
> (major thanks to tragedyofromance on tumblr for giving me feedback on this!)

_Valar morghulis..._

The thin edge of Valyrian steel cuts through the charred flesh with ease. Bloody and gargled relief seeps down from the gash across the woman's throat. 

_...but not like this._

Arya dutifully closes the woman's murky eyes. Everlasting darkness is a solace compared to the hell that surrounds them. She digs her heels into the ground, pushes herself upright, and swipes the catspaw on her sleeve. It is of little use. The sleeve is more blood than fabric, now; a trail of mercy and corpses lengthens behind her with each step she takes towards the Red Keep.

Arya had detested King’s Landing from the moment she first passed its gates with her father and Sansa. The only joy she had found here had been with the brave Syrio Forel, water-dancing and chasing cats, exploring dungeons and little nooks and crannies. Yes, she despised the foul-smelling capital but she finds no joy in the destruction and bloodshed that has fallen upon the city and its people.

It is quiet. It is unnatural. Occasionally the silence is broken by cries or whimpers, human voices begging for help. She knows she cannot help everyone in her path. 

_Help... Is that what I am doing?_ Arya grimaces when she sees the young man whose wheezing caught her ear. He is pinned, almost completely covered by a collapsed balcony. His head, the only exposed body part, is partially caved in. There is no hope for him. Arya unsheathes the dagger once more. _Surely there must be some mercy in death. There must_. 

By the time the Red Keep and Daenerys' forces come into view Arya's right sleeve weighs heavy with blood. She seethes when she hears how the Dothraki cheer, and sees how stoic and unrepentant the Unsullied stand under the overcast sky. _I shut one hundred and twenty two eyes today_. Her dagger only met skin when there was no chance of survival—and yet.

Brown, blue, green. Some of them she found underneath rubble. Some she found with their intestines out in the open. But most, most of the lives she returns to the Many-Faced God come from bodies with burnt skin and boiling blood.

 _That could have been my fate_.

An elderly man silently cradles the husk of a young boy. A Dothraki man with beautiful hazel eyes kicks the man. The man quiets evermore. The man does not cry. He simply stares. At nothing. There is nothing. 

_It might still be my fate._

The beast that flew above the city and rained fire all around her now lies atop a pile of crumbling wall stones. It flaps its black wings and roars in unison with the dragon queen's armies as her speech approaches its end. From where Arya is standing she sees Jon. His head of dark brown stands behind the head of silver. 

_He's alive._ Arya's left hand shakes and she grips the catspaw pommel even tighter. _Jon survived_. She sprints to her right with a new goal in mind. The long corridors that run alongside the sides provide sufficient cover. Not that it would matter overmuch; the men are in a frenzy, their faces never straying from their violet-eyed god. She has to squeeze between a collapsed portion of the ceiling and the wall. A particularly pointy slab of stone manages to rip through both fabric and flesh. Arya grunts and pulls her leg free. Just another scar to add to her collection.

She continues onward, only stopping to witness through a window how Tyrion Lannister yanks something— _His Hand pin!_ —from his chest and throws it down the steps before being promptly taken away. A sense of foreboding urges her to move faster, to be by her brother's side. If Tyrion has abandoned Daenerys she cannot think that Jon will stay by his aunt's side for much longer; he will need protecting from the dragon queen. Arya's lungs burn from exertion. The air gains texture and color. She struggles to not cough and purge her lungs of the ash that continues to fall and thickens the closer she gets to Jon. 

The corridor ends and opens to a set of stairs commonly used by servants and those of lesser blood. Arya remembers they lead to a side entrance close to the landing where Jon and the silver queen stand right now. Arya lays a hand on the wall to steady herself. She's tired. So tired. Her tongue darts out to moisten her cracked lips. She laughs. _I have no water left in me. The fire rid me of it. I am a dry river._

By the time she reaches the top of the stairs the laceration on her leg is pulsing and her throat is scratchy from the wracking coughs she was no longer able to hold in. The darkness of the corridor and side stairs lightens, and she steps into hues of gray and blue.

The ash covered floor muffles her feet well enough as she walks forward. She comes to rest at his side and examines him.

He shows signs of battle though nothing of great concern. A few splatters of blood here and there but no wounds of his own. She is glad of it. Life has taught her to be grateful for small blessings. Arya is standing mere inches away from him and they both watch as Daenerys Targaryen strides into the skeleton of what once was the Red Keep. Jon doesn't seem to notice Arya is there at his side. Unawares, he continues to glumly watch his aunt walk away. Arya hates it. 

"You're lucky." Jon twists around at the sound of her voice. He gasps her name but Arya does not stop speaking. It is time Jon _listen_ for once. "You live. You breathe. No body can say the same of the thousands that died today."

A little bean of a thought sprouts in her mind: perhaps even the House of White and Black would see what happened here as overindulgence. 

Her brother stares at her as if he cannot believe she is there. He grabs her by the shoulders and his eyes search her body for sign of injury just as she did with him. His eyes grow darker with each cut, gash, and blow he sees. His hand slides downward and he retracts it in fear when it comes away bloody. "Your arm—"

"The blood isn't mine." _It's the blood of the lives I returned to the Stranger. A small mercy—it is mercy. it is. is it? **it is it is it is it is** —for the people who your aunt could not do the justice of killing properly_. 

He doesn't look any happier by her assurance. "What are you doing here, Arya?" A girl hears the reproach. A sister tries to smother the hurt. 

"The queen was on my list. I came to kill her. Daenerys got to her first."

"You shouldn't have come. What were you thinking?" His hands had returned to her shoulders and he shakes her. Memories tumble round and over and under her skull. _Shake me some more_ , a girl pleas and in the fuzziness she thinks of an older man with eyes of the same grey... _No, not the same grey. These are duller. Unknown to the known of the girl whose body I own._ Arya Stark emerges once more, _He's not father. He doesn't have his eyes._ "You could have _died_. I could have lost you in the fire and not even known it."

 _He is desperate in his condemnation of me and my actions_ , Arya dully thinks of how even the imp seemingly denounced the dragon queen, _But I am yet to hear him condemn the silver queen. Not even now, after everything. He still stands behind her, an accomplice to this massacre._

"I heard the bells. The city had surrendered. She didn't care; she burned them all." Arya Underfoot whispers, loudly, "She nearly burned me, too. The falling buildings nearly crushed me. It was such a close thing, brother." Pieces, fragments of shameful regret on Jon Snow's face. 

Jon says nothing. His hands, however, speak. A clenching and unclenching of dirty and bloodied fingers. A nervous tick. It began when they were children. Arya remembers how the bastard of Winterfell would push his feelings to the tips of his fingers since his tongue had been tempered to a bastard's silence. _Scratch scratch._ She can hear his blunt nails dig in hard enough to scratch the dirt off his palm. _Scratch scratch scratch_. It is a mocking and damning sound.

_Arya Stark's stupid dreams and memories of a bastard brother have clawed my eyes out. I was blind. blind. blind._

"You knew," she realizes. "You _knew_ what she was and still you said, and _continue_ to say, _nothing_ against her. I know we haven't seen each other in years but this...I do not recognize this part of you. Sansa," here, his pupils contract, "thought you were playing the game of thrones. That you were afraid, trapped by the reveal of your parentage."

_I thought the same. I believed you to be caught in a spiderweb of your own making._

"Because the only other option was that you-you..." _had betrayed us._ "Seems Sansa had too much faith in you—and so did I."

He doesn’t defend himself.

Arya’s heart shivers and her right arm feels sticky under the congealing blood. The garment is ruined. _Sansa will have a fit. No, no she won’t. She’ll cry._ Her sister never liked death. Even for Littlefinger Sansa Stark shed tears, venomous tears. _I can’t let her see me like this_. “You knew and you still tried to make us believe we were wrong in mistrusting her. Tried to make us believe we were paranoid.” The words that follow are quiet and bleeding, “You knew.”

_You knew and, still, you cast us and the world into the fire. Just so your lover could satisfy her hunger for power._

Finally he speaks but the words that follow... "Dany did—she—she _freed_ the city from Cersei. She's the queen of the seven kingdoms now. And the North is part of those seven kingdoms." ...show Arya just how much her brother has changed. 

This is not the brother she knew. This is not her Jon. His hands feel foreign atop her shoulders. Arya pulls his hands off her and puts much needed distance between them. It wasn't Sansa who would end up betraying the family. The prejudice of childhood had blinded her not just to the virtues of a sister but also to the flaws of a brother. _I should have played the game of faces with him instead._

"Try telling that to Sansa."

He avoids the obvious implication, instead he orders her to wait for him outside the city gates. Has he forgotten there are no gates to herald her departure? They, too, have fallen. Her stomach churns with worry. She grabs him by the elbow before he can leave. Jon might be acting the lone wolf but he is still her brother, he is still part of the pack. 

"Jon. She knows who you are. As long as you live you will be a threat to her."

"She is my queen," he says again. "I believe in her. Please, just do as I say and wait for me outsi—"

Arya interrupts him with a hug. Physical contact takes many forms. Hugging a brother. Holding a lover. She has tried to learn them all in order to feel more human.

 _That old man was also hugging someone he loved._

She cannot listen to him any longer. Her arms wind around him painfully, and she knows that it is only herself that is hurting. "I won't wait for you. I can't." She lets him go. "I need to warn Sansa. She needs to know what happened here. I need to _be_ with her. With Bran. Goodbye, Jon."

Jon's mouth tightens slightly at the corners but he makes no move to join her. Arya now understands. He has made his choice. Her brother is a man grown. She cannot force him to leave. Her time is wasted here. There are others she can warn and protect, others who will listen. 

"Take care, Arya."

His whispered goodbye nips at her heels and chases her well after she mounts a white horse and leaves Kings Landing behind.

It is two days of hard riding before she finds a rookery inside a small and modest keep somewhere north of the capital. It is obvious the Dothraki passed through. Hundreds of horse tracks stamp the surrounding fields. Bodies and debris lay strewn under the sun. Inside, everything of value is gone and only lifeless vessels are there to greet her. She picks the keenest raven, and looks it straight in its coal eyes, "Bran, I do not know what you have seen, if you have mastered your powers and already know what happened. I don't even know if you're here. I could just be talking to a stupid bird. If you're here, please, guide this raven's wings and make it fly true." 

It is only luck, Arya thinks as she releases the raven, that they didn't burn the keep down. She watches the bird fly away, a little scrap of white tied to its feet. She waits until she can no longer see it in the darkening sky before she slumps against the stone wall.

It is only now that she allows her tear ducts to wash away the horrors she saw in Kings Landing.

It doesn't work.

She had forgotten she was dry.

Walking corpses, burning flesh, tearless cries, burning blood. 

She relives it all. 

She shuts her eyes, eyelids covering the light.

It makes no difference. The memories have burned themselves into her head.

 _They won't come out. I have to get them out before they drive me mad._ Stinging pain pinpricks her scalp. A reminder, cruel, that she is not invincible. Arya Stark is weak. Exhaustion and hurt have seduced the strength of her muscles and mind. She hadn't noticed she'd been clawing at her head. _Out. Out. Out. Out. OUT. **OUT**._

A sob claws its way out her chest and into the night. The cry is a bitter child, scared and angry at a world it is afraid of because it is so big and the child is so small. 

_Daenerys Targaryen._

_Daenerys Targaryen._

_Daenerys Targaryen._

_Daenerys Targaryen._

_Daenerys Targaryen._

_Daenerys Targaryen._

_Daenerys Targaryen._

Crack. Crack. _Arya Stark._ The head hurts. The wall does not. _A widowed fisherman._ Red. This body's blood _._ This flesh is weak. _Lord Frey_. The teeth tear easily into it. Faces. Masks. How many? _An orphan girl, nameless to the world._ Maybe if the mouth bites hard enough, makes the wound wide enough, this body can crawl inside. Devour itself. Seek out an answer inside. There must be an answer. _No one. Who am I? What the fuck am I? Kill me. Kill me. Oh, gods. Oh, nothing. Father. Mother. Robb. Help. Help._

_Please._

There is a face she hasn't taken. A corporal being she has not tested her craft on. No One wouldn't wear the face. No One only wants to hide the face. Take its power and stifle it until the world is cleansed. 

_I was trying to be good. I was. I was. I swear it. I was, wasn't I? Yes. Yes. No. Never. The world won't let me._

A tongue, loose and thirsty, licks the blood on the hand.

**_Daenerys Targaryen._ **

Is it a list if it is only one name?

* * *

"A raven comes, Lady Stark."

"What have you seen? _Bran_ —"

"There are moments I feel like Bran. They are precious, that I know." Eyes turn white. Silence. Eyes of her brother. "And there are moments I wish I didn't remember. 'Tis wicked, that they should come like a plague now when it would hurt most."

"I'm tired, Bran. Just tell me. I don't care. Not knowing how Arya and Jon fare... if you know, spare me nothing."

He speaks. 

She wishes he hadn't.

* * *

At this point in his life Tyrion thinks it is as good time as any to admit that perhaps he overestimated his cleverness. Here, in a store room of little importance, perhaps he can be honest with himself before he meets the dragon's fire. 

_I wanted power. I saw the power in Daenerys and loved her for it, thinking she could make me powerful, too, if only I was at her side as she conquered the world._

Tywin Lannister's ghost laughs at him from wherever it is souls like his go to rest. "You proved me right, Tyrion. I called you an ill-made, spiteful little creature full of envy, lust, and low-cunning." Tyrion fists his hair in shame. "But even I am surprised; you exceeded my expectations. With you the great house of Lannister will vanish. Everything I worked for _destroyed_."

There is no wine or mead in the room. Nothing to dull and drown the voices of those he has killed or pushed into the path of the Stranger. His father is the first but more are to follow. Joanna, his mother. Shae, his lover. Varys, his friend. Cersei and Jaime. Sooner or later, he fears, they, too, will come to remind him of his failures. And none, _none_ , have been as costly as what happened in Kings Landing. 

_I wonder if all the people that died today will come and visit me as well?_ His not so clever mind will have a trouble being host to so many guests. _How many died because I thought I could control her worst impulses?_

"You were right, Varys," Tyrion says through a cluttered throat. He imagines Varys laughing at his cheap expression of remorse. "But it's a hollow victory, isn't it?"

Time passes. He has spent less than a couple hours in his makeshift cell when he hears the echo of heavy footsteps. They are getting louder and he knows they are coming for him. He tries to settle himself into a position of calm while fighting the instinct to cry and vomit. _I am dying today. I am dying. Dying. Dying. Oh! Be calm. Death. Death. Be calm. Be proud. But there is no escape. Be calm. Death. Death._

The door opens and in walks Jon Snow. It isn't death, not yet, and Tyrion swallows his relief. His pride rears its head once more, foolish little man that he is. An Unsullied guard closes the door and leaves them be. Tyrion's eyes flick to Jon's swordless hip. 

"How gracious of you to visit me. I don't suppose you have any wine on you?" Tyrion stands and picks up a chair he had thrown during a particularly useless fit of desperation. He offers it, almost mockingly, a touch bitterly, to his guest. "Sit, Jon Snow. Tell me, has your queen told you when I am to share Varys' fate?"

Jon Snow cautiously steps further into the room but refuses the chair. Everything, from his grinding teeth to the curled toes in his heeled boots, tells Tyrion that the queen's lover does not want to be here. He is a man of contradictions, this Targaryen prince who looks more wolf than dragon. Tyrion is a man starving for—something. He wants to dig and see who this man-of-many-names is underneath it all. A final puzzle to solve, to prove his cunning, before he leaves the land of the living. Aegon Targaryen? Jon Snow? Neither? Both? 

His guest says nothing of his execution, preferring to frown at Tyrion's marked detachment from Daenerys. "She was your queen, too, not so long ago." With very little feeling he says, "I'm sorry it all had to end this way."

"You're 'sorry it all had to end this way'?" If Tyrion Lannister were a taller man there would be nothing stopping him from slapping away the vapid, mournful look that dresses Jon Snow's face. Instead, Tyrion can only stare at the fool standing before him. Bitterness that has been simmering now threatens to boil over and burn all within its reach. Perhaps not burn. There has been enough burning in this city. But he's had enough of the cold, too. What bad luck to not like any of the options laid out before you. This fool—this _blind_ , northern _fool_ —why does _he_ live while Tyrion must die? "Such a delicate, and empty, turn of phrase. I should know, I've used them many a time. You can't even let yourself say out loud what Daenerys did."

"I won't try to defend Daenerys but—"

"A good man, a _smart_ man, once told me that everything before the word 'but' is horse shit. Did you not hear her mention the North as part of her righteous liberation crusade?" _Not even I can defend what she is, what she's done. So why are you?_ Although. _Perhaps I'll prove myself wrong, maybe I'll grovel for my life when the time comes. I am no virtuous man._

"—she saw her best friend murdered by Cersei." He speaks over Tyrion, willfully deaf. "She has lost so much ever since she stepped foot on Westeros. Her dragons, her allies. What happened today _won't_ happen again. She'll recover from this. I _know_ she will."

"She _destroyed_ a city _after it had surrendered._ Tell me: how will the people of Kings Landing recover?" Tyrion doesn't wait for an answer. He lowers his voice and icily says, "They can't because they're _dead_. How can you—" He clamps his mouth shut in frustration and stands, tilting his head in disbelief. "You were _there_. You saw _it_ happen."

"Daenerys saved Westeros at great cost to herself. If it weren't for her and her armies we wouldn't be here right now, alive and breathing. The least we can do is stand by her side and help her through this. It's easy to be judge and executioner. Who hasn't done something they regret?"

" _Everyone_ has lost people they cared about. Me. You. The countless and nameless commoners that die by no fault of their own in wars they did not wage. Loss does not absolve cruelty. If it did there would be no crime, only some bastardized imitation of justice."

Grey eyes widen in manic fury. There is little sense in his reaction. Sense was not invited to this tête-à-tête. 

"I thought better of you, _Lannister_." His family name is spit and anger. "I don't even know why I came here. I didn't want to."

"I noticed."

"You're a hypocrite. Who are you to judge her, to judge me?" Tyrion feels small under the darkness that is the man before him. "You helped her on her quest for the throne. You _pushed_ me towards her. Beckoned me to Dragonstone with false intentions. And yet," Jon leans down. Down some more. Lower. Until he is of a level with Tyrion. The beast has found a wound. It bites. "Jealousy does not become you."

_That hurt. The truth often does._

"You cannot have her so you betray her. You will not convince me to do the same." Tyrion breathes again once he retreats. Jon says, "I love her. She is my queen, and _I love her_."

Love. An _opening_. 

"And what of the love you hold for your family? For the Starks?"

An opening that Lyanna Stark's only child cannot cover or stitch closed, surely.

"Even a northern fool, _especially_ a northern fool, like yourself must know they will not bend." The fur of the northern cape that hugs the fool's shoulders bristle. "They will not kneel."

—:—

_"Does she miss me, terribly?"_

_Frostiness. A lighthearted jape not well received._

_"A sham marriage and unconsummated."_

_—:—_

_"My birds tell me of an altercation. Jon Snow did not offer a warm welcome to our esteemed ally, Theon Greyjoy. I believe the King in the North said, 'What you did for her is the only reason I'm not killing you.'"_

_"Not unusual." They are no Jamie and Cersei. " They are the only wolves left."_

_"Curious—the only thing that stayed his anger was Sansa Stark. Such a power she holds between two men with betrayal and a dead almost-brother king between them. She might as well be here for how often her name and presence is invoked."_

—:—

"They will be loyal to the throne. They have no choice."

Jon Snow is present once more. He looks more man than beast. A chink in his armor. Suddenly, the darkness is not darkness. It constricts and melts and congeals into the purple half-crescents underneath worried eyes. _That is the gaze of a man near the edge—and the edge is all around him._

 _Yes_ , the demon monkey can still play the game. His life might not be forfeit, not yet. He can work with the tie between ~~siblings~~ cousins. On every person there are strings that one can pull. Tyrion just needs time to pull them taut enough for Jon to snap, to move where Tyrion wants him. 

To do what his lovesick heart will rage against. 

To save Tyrion. 

To kill Daenerys. 

If Tyrion Lannister were a noble man, a _good_ man, the safety of the realm would be the only motivation needed. Alas, this insignificant little room has reminded how much he values his insignificant little body, ugly though it may be.

"Why do you think Sansa—"

An Unsullied opens the door.

He is interrupted.

The dragon queen's nephew and lover has spent too long with the prisoner.

Interrupted. 

A shadow of Jon Snow gratefully backs out of the room. Escapes.

Interrupted. 

The imp's honeyed words of family, loyalty, and kinslaying are left unheard. 

Interrupted.

The ghosts never left the room. Now that Jon Snow is gone they all clamor for a piece of Tyrion's diminishing time. 

Tyrion was interrupted and he knows he is not long for this world. 

He wonders what could have been if he had only had a little bit more time. 

The ground is cold as stone ground is and always will be. He sits on it. 

_Interrupted, thwarted, by a common Unsullied guard._

Tyrion Lannister, the demon monkey, the imp, the son of Joanna and Tywin Lannister, laughs.

And the ghosts laugh with him.

**Author's Note:**

> I started this back in June, after the finale, but couldn't seem to get it right. I know it's hella late but I'M STILL IN MY FEELINGS ABOUT THE FRAUD THAT WAS SEASON EIGHT. SUE ME. D&D wanted us to believe Jon Snow became a lovesick fool for Daenerys. (I will always love Jon Snow pre-season eight!) 
> 
> **JUST TO CLARIFY:** I love Jon Snow. I just think Jon Snow (like many other characters) was twisted and OOC and ruined by D&D in season eight. This fic is a story exploring the use of D&D's season 8 version of Jon. This is _not_ a pro Jon/Dany fic. There will be a form of happy ending.
> 
> I just—ARGHH.
> 
> Thanks for reading you guys :) Let me know what you think of the chapter!


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